Reading (For Dummies)

Billboard Liberation Front

The Billboard Liberation Front appears to have run with it. I only wish they'd steal my idea (they're free to, if they want).

Say your Goodbyes to Fry's

I just got back from my last visit to Fry's. I must be turning into a really great crusty curmudgeon.

I wandered around for a while and grabbed a few computery bits. Then I decided I'd grab a Mini SD card for my phone while I was there. I went to the camera section, figuring that they'd be there. Looked around for a few minutes, and found Micro SD cards, regular SD cards, but the only Mini SD cards on the shelf were 512MB (I need more room than that).

I asked a helpful salesperson, who said that I should try the parts desk, as they handle most of the portable digital media type stuff.

I sauntered over, waited in line for ~20 minutes while the one poor salesperson that was working handled the woman in front of me (she pretty much didn't have a clue about computer parts but was trying to build a new PC herself, so I can understand the delay).

When I rolled up, I asked about Mini SD cards. "Yep, we have them, 1GB for $24.99, 2GB for $49.99." I asked for the 2GB card. Then Privacy reared her head.

"Sure thing, sir. What's your phone number?"

I hate junk mail. Most of all, I hate cold calls. I used to work at Radio Shack, when I was in high school. I was an idealist. A fictitious man by the name of Yeoman Smith, who lived on Grist Mill Court, conveniently next door to one of my Radio Shack coworkers, was my best customers. Yeoman Smith purchased thousands of dollars of merchandise from our store. One month, he bought ten of the same model 4-head VCR.

"Sorry, I don't have one of those."

"Well then I need your address."

"Sorry, I don't have one of those either."

"I'm sorry, sir, we can't sell anything to you without that information."

I turned around and pointed to the 512MB mini SD card on the shelf behind me.

"I'm sorry, sir, but it's store policy. I have to have this information."

At this point, I thought I should probably just make up a name and make up an address. Still, I hate backing down on privacy issues. If I don't want to give a company my personal info, I shouldn't have to.

"Is there a manager I can talk to about your store policy?"

"Yes, sir, but you're going to have to wait until I finish with the rest of the customers."

At this point, there were 15 or so people in line behind me. I opted not to keep them waiting, thanked the salesperson for his time, and put the hard drive, drive controller, and card reader that I was purchasing back on the shelf in their respective locations. Then I walked out, never to shop at a Fry's again.

Identify This

I've been selling some stuff on eBay recently, in order to raise some much-needed capital that the recent iBook death and new purchase have cost me. Things have sold for a lot more than I expected them to...$370 of sales already and I have yet to sell the CDRW/DVD drive and screen off my old ibook. Quite astounding...

I went to the post office today to mail the first round of items. Not having any cash, I went to use my credit card.

Back up a moment. For years I have been writing "Please See ID" on the back of all my cards. It's a trick I learned back when I used to work for Radio Shack. The industrious Brian Green taught it to me.

Back to the present. The post office lady informed that I could not use the card without a signature. I suddenly remembered hearing this before, so I said no problem I would come back with cash.

I went to the HSBC to withdraw some money, and talked to my friendly teller about the Post Office. "Oh yes," she said, "it's actually less safe to have someone look at your ID. It's very hard to forge someone's signature, but if they get a fake ID with your name and their picture on it, then they can still use your card."

I can only laugh my ass off at this brilliant deduction. It seems like it would be much easier to learn someone's signature than to make a fake ID, as the penalty for making a fake ID is much higher and the likelihood of getting caught much greater...

+1 315 395 0160

Just like David, I've gone cellular. I had a cell phone in Germany previously. This one is fancier...color screen, digital camera attachment, web browsing, infrared. No bluetooth as I couldn't justify spending hundreds of dollars on a phone. The infrared lets me sync contact data with my Zaurus at least.

I don't like cell phones much, mostly because of all the dumb conversations I hear on them. People in this town walk around saying what they're doing, "Yeah, I'm walking to the quad. Cool. Yeah I just got out of class. Yeah it's fun. No, I didn't know that. Get OUT! Ohmygawd!."

It really doesn't appeal to me. The handy (or cell phone) culture in my mind is so self-important that it needs to inform someone of every action, and those actions are so important that they must be reportable to everyone at a moment's notice. I am much more of a, "Let's meet at 5:30 at the coffee pavillion. Okay cool, bye," kind of guy. I usually like to be unplugged and away from it all.

I suppose that, on the funny side, I haven't actually brought my phone any place. It sits in my bedroom plugged into the wall. If I'm not home, people can wait. Maybe that will change, but I certainly hope not.

Neighbors

My neighbors and I are in a row. After one too many of their late-night parties I lost patience. The first four or five parties they had I asked nice if they'd turn their music down so I could sleep, then they went ahead and started having sex on the hood of my car (scratching it up).

The other night's 2am game of beer pong complete with screaming obscenities every few minutes did me in. I went over, told them in no uncertain terms to shut the hell up, went back inside. They got louder, so I called the cops. Yesterday they threatened physical bodily damage to me for ruining their fun. In an effort at paranoia, I've set up a motion detector/webcam in my window. The software is called motion and best of all there is a debian package (you will probably want the debian package ucbmpeg as well, so you can have it clean up the jpegs and leave mpeg movies for you).

Let them fuck with my car now!

It should at least provide a deterrent/evidence if they key my car, break windows, or decide to accost me in front of my apartment.

Oddly, I'm categorizing this entry under privacy. I suppose that this might fall under invasion of privacy, but I set up a cron job to delete all the photos and mpegs after they are one week old. That way, if I don't see anything wrong with windows or cars, I won't see anything at all.

More on the FTC do-not-call list

A helpful slashdot gnome points out this story on CNN. Apparently the FCC has decided to go along with the FTC, and now airlines, banks, and long distance carriers will be force to obey the do-not-call registry, too. So I guess I spoke a little too soon.

The do-not-call registry still needs some work, but it suddenly looks a lot better.

Ohwell. I won't be having a phone pretty soon anyway, so I guess it's kind of moot :-).

Don't call me, I'll call you

What happened to the Do Not Call Registry? It sucks. Take a look at what's not covered: Long Distance companies, Insurance, banks, airlines, political fundraisers, charities, surveys, companies that you purchased an item from (subsidiary companies too?). Okay so companies in these businesses can no longer outsource their telemarketing to someone else, but I'm sure they'll find a way around that. This sucks, I was hoping that I'd never have to be woken up or interrupted from dinner again.

Scenester Hell

After today's workshops, we went to dinner at a crazy little restaurant. I ended up eating dinner with a group of people, talking about privacy issues. In the small-talk, everyone at the table asks, "What's the EFF?" So I slap my head, hence the title.

Then I went to a hotel and smoked some substances with a bunch of famous people that would probably prefer not to be identified (we're at an anonymity conference, after all). Maybe Doug's keyranking will go up as a result.

In the meantime, I'm convincing a number of key developers to move out to Amsterdam. Hahaha.

Blogging the talks

I'm sitting at the Privacy Enhancing Technology workshop. This morning there were three papers presented on Mix networks, hiding communication by scattering the routing. It's tricker than it sounds, because you have to set up a big network of mixed routes, and be mathematically sure that an untrusted node in the mix won't affect things too much, be sure that the message gets to where it's going, and try to make the network not pass too many messages (flooding the network).

Some of this stuff is damn cool. Under "neutral traffic" (the case where everyone in a n-node network is sending 1 message to everyone else), you get an explosion of possible messaging sequences. In a 3-node network, assuming you can observe messages being passed between the nodes, there are 115 possible communications that might be happening, all with equal probability.

And the paranoid rejoice, because they see that it is good.

Crypto

About a year ago today, I met Doug and since then I've become slightly more paranoid delusional. And Doug got me hooked on crypto. Last night he emailed me about the PET Workshop taking place in Dresden. So now I'm organizing a key signing so I can lower my mean shortest distance. And I even found out that there some profs here with quite a few signatures. The one across the hall from me has 20 some odd sigs on his key. Amazing.

I can't thank Doug enough for helping make me a better nerd.

Do you encrypt?

Quote of the moment:
"If encryption is outlawed, only outlaws will @goH7OjBd7*dnfk=<q4fDj]Kz?." - /usr/games/fortune

But really, do you encrypt? I digitally sign, at least...not enough of my friends actually use crypto. So start by downloading GNUPG and then get a plugin for your mail reader (like Outlook or Eudora). Do you really want the man reading all your email? It's happened before.

It feels good to be following the news again.

I forgot to finish my rant

But I'm posting it anyway.

Ted came over to say goodbye to me, it was entertaining as always.

My alter ego

I sold my car finally. The hungarian guy I showed it to bought it!

1500 smackers!

I moved all my crap down to New Jersey. Went to the dentist, clean checkup but I have to get a tooth pulled Monday before I leave for Germany. Had a fun conversation with my grandparents this evening...I really like them which is weird because of generational gap. Ohwell. I'll write more when there's more to say, right now I'm just running around a whole lot with too much to do and no time to say.